FDA Poised to Issue Stricter Guidelines on Animal Antibiotics

The Food and Drug Administration is poised to issue its strongest guidelines ever on animal antibiotics as a means to reduce what it considers a clear risk to human health, the New York Timesreports today. The guidelines are expected to end the use of antibiotics for animal growth and call for tighter oversight by veterinarians.

“The agency’s final version is expected within months, and comes at a time when animal confinement methods, safety monitoring and other aspects of so-called factory farming are also under sharp attack. The federal proposal has struck a nerve among major livestock producers, who argue that a direct link between farms and human illness has not been proved. The producers are vigorously opposing it even as many medical and health experts call it too timid,” according to the Times article.

“There is no conclusive scientific evidence that antibiotics used in food animals have a significant impact on the effectiveness of antibiotics in people,” according to the National Pork Producers Council.

The American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture reached a significant milestone in 2017 – 50 years since its founding. In the beginning the Foundation focused primarily on research for advancing agricultural mechanization and technology.

The Conservation Reserve Program is a voluntary program that pays farmers and ranchers to retire environmentally sensitive cropland. Contracts for land enrolled in CRP are 10 to 15 years in length, yet USDA Farm Service Agency data recently revealed that nearly one-quarter of all land enrolled in CRP has been enrolled for more than 20 years, and 12 percent o […]